Day 4041 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Titus 2:14 NIV

The reason

I think one of the hardest, most profound, most confusing and yet most common questions in all of Christianity is why. Why would God do what He’s done in sending us His Son knowing that we’d made a life out of trusting in lies to lead what became and still remains the way that most here are walking, aimed only away from the Way that He made? Why would Jesus do what He did, enduring the scorn, the shame, the suffering for what is a people who mostly cheered it on?

Why would He, as we discussed yesterday, even go so far as to promise to restore unto said people all the time and life and hope they’d lost to what’s amounted to nothing short of a self-continued plague as has made all of us so cantankerously confused that still the vast majority live only to lose what is everything from His love to the everlasting life offered within it?

What is His reason?

And I know this is something that all of us struggle with because there so often just doesn’t seem to be one. Rather the majority of our time here is spent either committing sins against Him still, walking thus in the selfishness that all sin is, wallowing in the shame that all sin leads toward and/or worrying that perhaps we’ve done so much so wrong that either He won’t want anything to do with us or that He can’t do anything with us at all.

I know for a fact that of the above we’ve all experienced at least one at least once.

Maybe even once a day if not even more often than that!

And that’s because what’s become of life is nothing at all for which it was designed. Rather we’ve become a creation that continues to delight in everything from dishonesty to deceit to the very darkness which we still seem to think can hide it all from whomever we don’t want to see the truth of who we’ve become as is now defined by the reality of all that we’ve lost along the way to what’s been the path paved of self-proclaimed good intentions that have in fact all but led us straight to hell.

All while literally knowing the adage!

But alas, it’s never once seemed to matter what we know or assume we might. For rather still we continue to delight in doing so much so wrong that, rather than rethinking our direction in light of the disasters it’s all but demanding, we just now seek out ways to put wrong for right and darkness for light and truth for a fight that we’re willing to fight, not for, no, but rather almost always against.

Yes, we are a people waging a seemingly endless war against honesty, against modesty, against morality, all not once seeming to have much of a grip on the reality of mortality which ought to inspire us to change our identity from sons and daughters of sin and shame to those who have indeed been redeemed from their lives as have all been lived as if such were either unneeded or simply unwanted.

But you see, that’s my question for you today:

Why is it that we still live so often as if we don’t want anything to do with Him?

Surely it’s not that we’re not interested in anything He has to offer. Surely it’s not that we have no ability to appreciate all He endured to offer it. Surely it isn’t that we don’t know what He’s offered. Surely it’s not that we don’t realize just how badly we need what all He’s offered.

I honestly think that it’s simply because we can’t reconcile the gift of rescue, of redemption, of restoration and that aimed at the heart of a promise filled with so much hope that Heaven now offers unto all of us, every single one, the gift of forever in which to experience the love, the joy, the peace, the patience of our Father with the fact that we’ve so willfully all but waged a veritable war against all that.

Because that reality is entirely too stupid to consider!

For who in their right mind would rebel against the Creator of mankind who came in our image to die in our stead so as to save us from death?

Yes, you read that right!

He died to save us from death! The one thing we all still fear. The one worry that still keeps so many awake at night. The one promise that has befallen us that has in turn since caused us to become so confused, so caustic, so cancerous in fact that we do whatever we can to pretend that such a thing isn’t coming for us.

Why?

Because we’ve bought the lie that’s told our mind to tell our eyes to look for our best life in what remains a place that is itself passing away.

Starting to see His reason yet?

It’s that long ago He created us to be His, even gave us of His image so that we’d be able to physically see that we are not of this world as there is nothing else like us here. But alas, we’ve each so tarnished His image as was given us in our having long since given away all but everything that made us so unique unto all that is so common that it’s all basically already being counted as if garbage. Indeed, we’ve become a people who live almost exclusively for all that is explicitly warned to be the very substance of all that is here passing.

We are living for death, thereby once again proving Scripture true within our way of life as given to living against it.

Ain’t it a mystery?

No, to put it plainly, no it isn’t. Why? Because Scripture basically said we would. That we’d go from bad to worse in all our deceiving and being deceived. That we would retain a form of godliness but deny its power by continuing to assume a measure of our own as is owned in the things we own and this ongoing audacity to think that we’ve made it all possible. That we would in fact continue to grow so fat from His ensuring we’re fed that we’d forget all about Him.

And tell me that you can look around at what the world’s become and not agree that the vast majority have forgotten Him indeed!

It’s impossible. We’re walking in a world all but on fire already, and in truth, the only real shocker is that we’ve set it ourselves. Why? Because we’re too impatient to wait for a sign. We’re in too big a hurry to reach the finish line. We’re all so amazing at basically destroying life that, since it’s pretty much all we know to do, we just keep doing it again and again and again.

And so, again, why would He do what the Bible says He came to?

Well, thankfully to help us in light of His understanding our now common standing inside such ongoing confusion as is proven in how we continue doing things that we ought to know will only leave us feeling empty and ashamed, He made it as easy as can be by literally telling us right here.

And what I believe makes it so hard for us to believe is that, well, it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with us.

And that right there is enough to cause us to think the story’s nuts!

Because around here all of life not only has a lot to do with us but it all but revolves entirely around us. Everything here has become all about what we want, what we like, what we hate, what we fear and making sure that we never let the world see that we are afraid. And all of that because that’s all of everything that everyone else does and we’ve been made perfectly aware that if we’re to fit in here and be comfortable while we are here then we’ve to just fall in line behind mankind and say, do, think, believe only what they tell us to.

Thus making man into gods, something we obviously love the thought of having long thought of ourselves as nothing short of the same!

Alas such is the very thought that now makes the salvation of a Savior seem strange. Because, well, why would Jesus need to freed us from what seems unto us a life going pretty alright most of the time? Why would He offer to forgive us for our doing of only what we’ve long stood convinced we were right, justified, all but expected to do? Why would He die, suffering all the way through, just to help us see the help we need in what’s long been a way of life we’ve lived in which we rarely need any help at all and that we do need is best sought from ourselves?

After all, we’re the ones who know what’s best right? For after all, there are our lives right? Because, well, we are the only ones living them are we not? Nobody else is living my life. Nobody else knows what keeps me up at night. Nobody else knows the fears I feel.

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.

Well, He does. In fact He remembers things that we’ve tried so hard to bury and forget that we actually managed to do it. He’s heard every word we’ve ever said. He’s seen everything we’ve ever done. He even knows every thought we ever thought we were right to think!

Which brings us right back to the curiosity of it all.

If He does know everything we’ve said, done, been, become because of it, then He obviously knows of all the times that we’ve fallen short. He knows all the times that we’ve chosen to fail. He knows all the reasons that we’re afraid to fear Him. He knows all the things that we’re worried we’ll have to lose and leave behind. He knows all the idols we’ve made thrones in our minds. He knows the entirety of the life we’ve lived.

Problem is that so too do we.

Now we don’t talk about it at parties. We don’t hang posters of it on our walls. We don’t open a phone book and start making calls to everyone who will answer all excited to tell them all about all we’ve done. In fact we still hide most of it. We still deny most of it. We still stand convinced that so much of it wasn’t as bad as reality has since started to convince us it may have been.

No, surely we haven’t messed up as much as we probably know we have. And again, I say probably because we honestly all know what shame feels like. We all know the weight of guilt. We’ve all met regret more times than we even remember.

And if that’s the case and there’s been so much waste of time and intention inside of our lives and how we’ve lived them, well then why would He give His in response to our having all but thrown ours away?

Because He’s never been as quick to give up on us as we’ve proven to be ourselves.

That’s why.

It’s not because we deserve it or ever could. It’s not because He knows we’re capable of doing good by ourselves. It isn’t because He believes in us as much as it seems we’ve tried. In fact, it’s because He knows that we’ll only go on believing in ourselves and thus being limited by ourselves every time we do.

But friends, He wants more for us than we’re able to accomplish or understand or build or even believe on our own.

Why?

Because we’re not our own. No, such is merely the biggest and most blatantly obvious lie of them all! In fact that’s the one lie that all of mankind has fallen for. That these lives are ours and that we’re thus right to live them however we see fit. That we’re supposed to seek only our own success and satisfaction. That we’re supposed to be apparently satisfied only in our own success.

And so we seek this. We seek out pleasure as opposed to pain. We seek for power rather than weakness. We seek for that which achieves for us a good standing amongst those still standing against God. We do so many things that keep us at odds with He who holds the keys to life and death and has promised to give each of us a say in which one we turn when it turns out that this part of life doesn’t last forever.

Problem then becomes that He knows which one we’ve all come to reach for.

And, well, again He wants more for us than we even want for ourselves because, well, He wants us to live forever whereas we’re seemingly quite content with living for only the content of all that’s here.

So He came to do what He did to help us see that we’re all already as good as dead in what have been lives that haven’t gone good even one single time. Indeed, there are here none that are good, none who do what is right, none who’ve lived for only the delight of hearing Him say well done. Rather all of us, every single one, has done things that deny Him. We’ve all said things that reject Him. We’ve all thought thoughts that have no room for Him.

We’ve all believed in things that aren’t Him and thus aren’t able to offer us what He did as they can’t do what He’s done as there remains but One Son who has the One Name under Heaven given unto man by which the same must be saved.

Not could be. Not should be. Not might be.

Must be.

Why?

Because we’ve all so lost our minds that we watch a world still live to lose their lives. Every single day this world goes from bad to worse in every way possible. The darkness of this place is so evident that it’s tangible now. We can feel it. We can see it. We hear it all the time anymore.

We are literally walking through the fulfillment of what Scripture says the last days will be like in 2 Timothy 3 in which we’re told to “mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people. They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over gullible women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these teachers oppose the truth. They are men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone.”

And what makes it arguably worse is that we all see this. We see the hatred. We see the selfishness. We see the darkness. We feel the sinfulness still waging that same war inside of us as still we wrestle with temptations and lusts and other misplaced trusts.

And so then, again, why would He offer us life? Why, as we discussed yesterday, would He promise to restore unto us all the time and life we’ve lost to decisions our own minds have made? Why would He give us the promise of forgiveness? Why would He offer us the hope of Heaven?

Why does He love us still when it seems that most here still hate Him?

Because what Father is ever eager to watch their kids all but kill themselves?

You see my friends, here inside this life in which we’ve all tried so hard to make everything seem so light and inconsequential, we’ve lost the powerful gravity of God’s reality. We’ve so softened and sugarcoated everything that nothing means anything anymore. But the reality is that we need the brutality of Scripture’s honesty because we honestly have no hope of eternal life without His light blinding us to the desire to remain what we’ve become.

Because we shouldn’t want any part of who we are without Him.

Again, just look around at what we’ve become without Him being our goal, our priority, our purpose, His hope our promise.

What we see is why we need to be saved because nothing here is as it should be. For even the good that is done is often done only accidentally. Friends, it should have never befallen man that we’ve fallen so short of Him that acts of kindness are often random. They should be commonplace. They should be seen every single day. They should be our normal!

But they aren’t, are they?

No, rather we’ve become a people all but numb to the reality we’ve created. All because, well, if we were to admit that we’ve indeed had our hand in creating this mess, we’d then only further realize the need for the forgiveness we’ve all only learned to deny we need.

Thankfully He’s not quite so ready to deny us access to Him as we’ve denied Him access to us.

That’s why He did what He did and does still what He still does. It’s to free us by showing us a love that means more than everything else. All so that we might be found among those few who do turn, who do repent, who do opt to spend the rest of our days walking in His Way doing those good things that He prepared for us to do as a people who live as if love is normal rather than a goal to pursue.

That’s why He offers us redemption, restoration, rescue from what we’ve become.

It’s because He still has so much more that we can see, more that we can be.

And He offers us His patience so that we’ve all got every chance possible to see it for ourselves.

Because He wants us for Himself, a people He at first created to be His, a people He came to revive from a life we’ve lived becoming everything else. Simply because all that He is is life itself and so then anything else is only everything less. And, well, He who created us to be His definitely then didn’t create us to die.

No, we chose that on our own.

Seems a perfectly good reason to turn our trust to Him and never trust in ourselves again!

#LeaveNoSoulUntold